Amid her regular routine of deflecting hard questions from journalists (last week, specifically about the Trump administration’s inhumane family separation policy), White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made time to sit down for a softball interview with Sinclair Broadcast Group to talk about liberal “media bias.”

In a two-part interview conducted on June 20 and released on June 21 and June 25, Sanders joined Sinclair chief political analyst and former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn to talk about the ways so-called liberal media outlets are biased against her and the president and to discuss President Donald Trump’s recent summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. These parts of Epshteyn’s interview are now airing as “must-run” segments on more than 100 Sinclair-owned and -operated local TV news stations across the country, sandwiched between sports and the weather.

In the latest “Bottom Line With Boris” segment, Sanders and Epshteyn discuss the “disrespectful and despicable” ways that “many in the media” treat Sanders. According to a Media Matters search of the iQ media database this morning, this segment has already aired on local news stations in at least 21 states.

The entire astonishing two-minute spot is worth watching, if only to understand the propaganda that will now be broadcast into living rooms across the country. Below is a full transcript and video.

BORIS EPSHTEYN: The way many in the media treat White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is disrespectful and despicable. Here is what she told me about her relationship with the press.

[INTERVIEW CLIP]

EPSHTEYN: What would you say the reason is for some of the overarching and really over-the-line heat that you have faced from some folks, sometimes very personal. What is the root, you think, of some of the treatment you’ve received?

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: I think some people, Democrats in particular, at some point they’re going to have to decide if they love our country more than they hate this president. And I hope that they’ll make the right decision in that process. But there’s certainly a lot of anger and a lot of hostility, and I think in large part it’s because they’ve got somebody like President Trump, who always beats them at their own game. He always overcomes the things that they say are not possible. They said he’d never run for president. He did. They said he’d never win. He did. They said he couldn’t get tax cuts done. He did. They said that the economy would completely crash. It’s the best it’s been since World War II. I mean, every single time that they try to tell him he can’t do something or that really bad things are going to happen, he proves them wrong, and I don’t think that they like that a lot.

EPSHTEYN: What is something that people at home may not know about you, that they’re not seeing when you’re sparring with the media or representing the president?

SANDERS: That maybe that I’m a little nicer than sometimes --

EPSHTEYN: I think you’re very nice.

SANDERS: -- than the media wants to make me out to be. Again, I’m a pretty, I think, happy person. I love life. And I’m a lot nicer, I think, than they make me out to be in the press.

[END OF INTERVIEW CLIP]

EPSHTEYN: Here is the bottom line: Sarah is a good person, a mother of three, and a public servant. I hope that all members of the press start treating her with the respect that she deserves.

The June 21 segment of the interview focused on all the ways Sanders and Epshteyn believe the North Korea summit was successful; it has now aired on stations in at least 22 states. Here is a partial transcript of what local news audiences heard about the meeting:

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: And the president is a true leader on the global stage. And it was really magnificent to watch.

BORIS EPSHTEYN: Do you think that North Korea will end up denuclearizing?

SANDERS: As the president likes to say, we'll see what happens, but it was definitely a step in the right direction and we’re continuing to work towards denuclearization. We're going to keep pushing.

EPSHTEYN: Last questions on this topic. What about the criticism -- the president has been criticized by some folks, expectedly -- for being "too nice" to Kim Jong Un. What do you say to that?

SANDERS: I think those are people that are more worried about attacking this president than looking for the good that is happening both within our country and across the world.

[END OF INTERVIEW CLIP]

EPSHTEYN: Here is the bottom line: As you just heard from one of the few Americans who have met with Kim Jong Un face to face, the summit was a success.

Sanders is far from the first Trump administration official (or personal affiliate of Trump’s) to retreat to the Sinclair safe space in order to escape criticism. Just last month, comically corrupt Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt sat down with Epshteyn for a softball interview. “Bottom Line With Boris” has previously featured interviews with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, and then-Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin.

On Saturday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted about being denied service at a restaurant in Lexington, VA, over her complicity in anti-transgender and anti-immigrant Trump administration policies. Sanders’ tweet helped set off a wave of media opinions that opponents of bigotry should “let the Trump team eat in peace,” and that vocally opposing bigoted policy “violates the spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt: ”The lady who owns this restaurant, is she allowed to do that? Is that discrimination? Are you allowed to just kick someone out because you don't agree with their policies or beliefs?”

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations claimed on an all-white MSNBC panel that denying Sanders service at a restaurant “violates the spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: “The history in our country of denying people access to restaurants, to water fountains and even bathrooms is too raw, too real.”

ABC’s Matthew Dowd: “If a vulgar person makes you vulgar, they win. Let us meet hate with love. Let us meet bullying with an embrace. Let us meet vulgarity with civility.”

CNN’s David Axelrod said, “Kind of amazed and appalled by the number of folks on Left who applauded the expulsion of @PressSec and her family from a restaurant.”

Fox & Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth said on the show, “It’s so ironic … you’ve got this tolerant leftist running this restaurant” but she refused to serve a Trump official.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius tweeted, “Hard to imagine an incident that would be more helpful to Trump White House and more harmful to its critics than this refusal to serve a senior government official, however troubling her views.”

Trolls harassed the restaurant, its owners, its culinary team, and even an unrelated restaurant with the same name. Past similar campaigns have inspired violent acts, including a gunman shooting inside a Washington pizzeria and an armed police team being deployed.

On Saturday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted via her official Twitter account that the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, VA, had asked her to leave the restaurant because of the Trump administration’s policies.

Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so

Following her tweet, supporters of President Donald Trump and pro-Trump trolls started targeting the restaurant, its staff, its owner, and her family online. The avalanche of harassment so far has included doxxing her (publishing her personal contact information) on multiple online platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and message boards Voat and 4chan. Previous harassment campaigns organized by pro-Trump trolls have had dangerous, real-life consequences for their targets, including acts of violence and potentially dangerous pranks.

On Voat, pro-Trump trolls called for a comprehensive harassment campaign and posted the personal online profiles of the members of the restaurant’s culinary team:

Another since-archived thread included her personal address and called on people to send her some “love mail”:

On Twitter, even though the platform specifically prohibits users from sharing such sensitive information, people shared the restaurant owner’s personal phone number:

Pro-Trump pages on Facebook were also part of it:

The doxxing has been accompanied by promises of violence, and prominent trolls are already connecting the restaurant to the dangerous “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory and to “Q,” a fictitious person from a related conspiracy theory about the “deep state,” “QAnon.” Pro-Trump trolls pushed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory during the 2016 presidential election, claiming that celebrities and Democratic politicians had links to a pedophilia ring hidden in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. Even though the conspiracy theory was debunked, the story still inspired a man to open fire inside the family restaurant, which he claimed he had entered to self-investigate.

It is extremely worrisome to see trolls sharing the restaurant owner’s personal information, particularly given the dangerous incident that followed the targeted harassment of Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg. After trolls made his personal information public and spread it on message boards, someone made a prank call to the police and claimed there was a hostage situation inside Hogg’s home, prompting deployment of an armed police team. The act is known as “swatting,” and it’s a harassment tool that trolls aim at their targets; on at least one occasion, it has proved fatal.

Another terrifying consequence of harassment campaigns unleashed by pro-Trump trolls is that they sometimes target parties with no connection to the situation spurring the attacks. In this case, a D.C. restaurant with the same name as the Lexington establishment has been "bombarded with calls, emails," and "death threats" -- and was egged over the weekend -- despite having no connection to the Virginia Red Hen. Similarly, after the February school shooting in Parkland, FL, Infowars host Alex Jones accused an innocent man of being the shooter, unleashing “ridicule, harassment, and threats of violence” against him.

Media outlets, however, seem to be focusing their coverage on whether the actions of a private business owner who followed her conscience reflect intolerable incivility. Meanwhile, reporting on the dangerous harassment and attacks that have followed is taking a back seat.

The fact that Trumpers physically assaulting a restaurant unrelated to the controversy will attract less coverage than Red Hen declining to serve Sanders is a reminder that the actual issue here is the disproportionate clout of conservative propaganda television and not civility.

Fox & Friends didn't mention that a top White House aide has abruptly resigned amid allegations of physical domestic abuse, but found time to attack former President Barack Obama by name about various pseudo-scandals at length.

Rob Porter, a top White House aide with direct access to President Donald Trump, resigned abruptly on February 7 amid allegations of years of domestic abuse, including physical violence, from two ex-wives. After the allegations were first reported by the Daily Mail, CNN interviewed both women, who detailed years of physical and emotional abuse in their respective marriages over a ten-year period, including punching, choking, and throwing fits of rage.

White House chief of staff John Kelly initially released a statement of support for Porter, calling him “a man of true integrity and honor” (in a new statement, he condemned the abuse); shortly after, media began reporting that Kelly had prior knowledge of the abuse allegations, which were part of why Porter was denied his FBI security clearance. Since the story broke, a third, unnamed woman who currently works in the federal government and previously dated Porter has said she suffered "repeated abuse" by him as recently as 2016. Though he has resigned, Porter denied all allegations, calling them "outrageous" and "simply false."

From the time the story broke on Wednesday through 9 a.m. Thursday, Fox mentioned Porter’s name ten times over four shows (seven of the mentions occurred in just two reports). Fox first covered the allegations only after White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was pressed on the allegations in the February 7 White House briefing. Fox’s prime-time shows did not mention Porter at all aside from a brief report on the 6 p.m. hour. Fox & Friends the following morning also didn't mention Porter.

While Fox & Friends didn’t find time to report on the resignation of a top aide close to Trump stemming from domestic abuse allegations, the show hosts did mention former President Barack Obama by name 18 times in relation to various contrived scandals, including Uranium One and the private text messages of two FBI employees.

Methodology:

Media Matters searched SnapStream for mentions of "Porter" on Fox News between February 6 and February 9, 2018 and "Obama" on the February 8 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends. Pronouns "he," "his," and "him" were excluded. Mentions of Porter by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders during the live airing of the press briefing were also excluded.